Measuring Green Speed With a Stimpmeter
During the summer of 2010 it became obvious that we needed to make some changes to our greens management practices here at The Villages. The greens had become soft and puffy with unacceptable putting quality. After talking to the USGA, fellow Golf Course Superintendents and several suppliers, I came up with a game plan on how to make the greens smoother, faster, firmer and more consistent. Here is a list of the changes we implemented during the summer of 2011:
- The biggest change we made was in how we verticut the greens. We set the verticutter blades much deeper into the green than ever before. (7/32” below the green’s surface) We verticut the greens twice a week for a total of 16 times. We were planning to apply light sand topdressings after the verticutting, but found that the verticutting brought sufficient sand up to the green’s surface that we were able to blow off the thatch and drag the sand back into the green’s surface for a nice light topdressing.
- We lowered the green’s ‘height of cut’ by 1/100”. We also started mowing the greens with hand greens mowers five days a week, instead of only once.
- We changed our green’s small tine aerifications from hollow to solid tines. It isn’t possible to get sand into a small aerification holes. I made this change because I felt that removing a plug and not filling the hole with sand was contributing to softer greens.
- In 2010 we switched from Unipar to the smaller #30 topdressing sand for all light topdressings. We will continue to use Unipar to fill the holes with the large tine aerification in April.
- This past summer we also began working with a new vendor who specializes in greens maintenance products. We began using several of his products, including fertilizers, growth regulators and a soil wetting agent. I feel that this change has helped keep our greens healthier than in past years while maintaining good turf color and reduced excessive turf growth.
Fortunately, all the changes seem to have paid off. I think the consensus of the golfers this year has been very positive. Stimpmeter readings for the months of August and September have gone from an average of 10’ in 2009 to 10’6” in 2010 to 11’7” in 2011.
